1. Scientific Theories and Laws
2. The First Decade (1936-1946)
4. The Second Decade (1946-1956)
6. The Third Decade (1956-1966)
8. The Fourth Decade (1966-1976)
10. The Fifth Decade (1976-1986)
12. The Sixth Decade (1986-1996)
14. The Seventh Decade (1996-2006)
15. The Theory of More than Everything
16. The Eighth Decade (2006-2016)
18. The Ninth Decade (2016-2026)
Appendix A Paintings
Appendix B TTOMTE and a Steady State Universe
Appendix C Musical Compositions
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Then for a few one hundred billion years, the universe changed very slowly to form the patterns. Then a second explosion caused the process to speed up, making it appear as if the beginning was only fifteen billion years ago. How much money do you want to bet on this possibility?
I've left out several more problems with the Big Bang idea because they take more background than we've presented so far. For the last forty years, every time a new observation contradicts the Big Bang, another assumption pops up. As these pile up, the explanations and predictions become vague and start coming close to "Anything is possible." As mentioned before, this statement is a good attitude but a poor theory.
Up to now, we've been concentrating on the physics of plasma, the primary reason why we wanted to use Lerner's book. However, he also spends quite a bit of time following the growth of the Big Bang idea. We're only going to highlight a few historic traces and cannot possibly give you all the ups and downs of the theories of the universe presented in his book.
The first written cosmologies came along about 2500 BC in Egypt and thereabouts. The stories described how the ancestors of the kings and pharaohs separated the waters by divine decree.
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